THE EXECUTIONS IN THE PUNJAB.
THERE is only one ground upon which the execution of these Kookas can be justified, and that is State necessity. We will endeavour to see presently how much that plea is worth under the circumstances, but we must first admit that no other excuse can be pleaded for an act which needs every excuse to induce Parliament even to condone it. There is no suggestion even that the three hundred Sikh fanatics who under Barn Singh attacked the fort of Malod were mutineers in insurrection against their officers. That would be a full excuse, for the Sepoy is the only free soldier in the world, the only one who enlists voluntarily and can retire when he pleases, and for a soldier who can give in his resignation whenever he likes to attack his officer or disobey orders is, we maintain, the highest of offences against society, and a very grave one against the moral law which teaches fidelity to a solemn contract. No State has ever been able to tolerate mutiny, and a native understands the obligations of service at least as well as any European. The Kookas, however, were civilians, who may some of them have been in the Army, but who are not there now, who did not attack their officers, and did not appeal to the soldiery as a class. They did not by the massacre of women and children put themselves out of the pale of humanity, and their motives, whether secret or avowed, so far from exaggerating, tend slightly to palliate their moral guilt. Their avowed motive is the necessity of reinvigorating Hindooism by a recurrence to its ancient practices, more especially monogamy, the disuse of images, and reverence for the cow, objects which they seek partly by persuasion, partly by violence ; and their probable and secret intention of expelling the white man is one which, if they adhere to decent laws of war—such laws, for example, as bind their conquerors—is not necessarily immoral. We have no right to forget that, in Northern India at all events, we reign without the popular consent. No momentary necessity can be pleaded, as in the celebrated case of the Umballa well, for the Kookas were beaten and disarmed, or they could not have been tied to the guns ; there was the fort to confine them in, and there were their captors ready to act as guards. They were not executed in consequence of standing orders, such, for example, as exist in some armies, for the permanent policy of the Indian Government is to treat rebels, when not mutineers, or guilty of murder individually, as political criminals, whom it is necessary to shut up, but not necessary to kill. Even the Wahabee leaders are alive. Nor can it be asserted that the officers concerned were within their legal right. The powers of the protected chiefs of the Sikh border-land are very great and very indefinite, but they certainly do not extend to an indiscriminate slaughter of British subjects even for insur- rection, and the Commissioner in Umritsur who executed sixteen fugitives is as much bound by laws as if he were in Suffolk. He can do anything needful to maintain the public peace, but peace is secured when rebels are captured, or have, as in this instance, fled in dismay before the legal authorities. The power of life and death has never beeii entrusted to any officer in India.
The single plea worth study, and we may add, the single plea likely to be put forward, is State necessity, and we will endeavour to examine that impartially, for it is the plea on which English judgment is likely to be in mon Insurrec- tion in India is formidable for many reasons, but there is one among them of which we suspect our countrymen at home are not aware. It does not exist in any other country in the world, not even in Poland, or Venice under Austrian rule, or Lorraine as it is now. Throughout Northern India there exist, not in scores or hundreds, or even thousands, but in hundreds of thousands, men whose business is armed idleness, whose passion is fighting, whose hope is disorder, who will support any cause if it offers them a chance either of licence or of spoil. They are not the enemies of a dynasty, but of society ; not the friends of any cause, but devoted to any leader who will
• give them their long-lost right of rapine. These men are especi- ally numerous in this border-land, and swarm up in crowds to any leader who has shown the capacity to make head against order even for a day. If Ram Singh had seized Malod, he might in a week have been obeyed by five thousand and in a fortnight by fifteen thousand men, and have been beyond the reach of local authority altogether. Moreover, it is possible that the Kooka leader may have laid very deep plans, may have warned his followers to rise at a given signal, may have been certain of ultimate sympathy among the more fanatic of the Sikhs, —those warriors of " the Baptism of the Sword " to whom Lord Lawrence appealed when it was needful to retake Delhi. We should ourselves say that this was certain, judging from the extent of Ram Singh's following and the secrecy in which he has contrived to envelope proceedings of which all true Sikhs must be more or less aware. A successful tinieute of this kind therefore might have been exceedingly dangerous,— so dangerous as to threaten the prosperity of provinces; almost so dangerous as to justify any measure of repression ; but then this was an unsuccessful one. The fire had been stamped out when the incendiaries were executed ; the blow had failed when the strikers were massacred ; the rebels were crying " quarter " when it was refused. The danger was ample justification for the slaughter in the field, for Mr. Cowan's gallant rush to the attack with his police, for the extermination, if need were, of all who retained their arms, but was it sufficient reason for refusing quarter to the disarmed That is the real question at issue, for between a massacre of prisoners by gun and sabre and their instant slaughter by blowing away from guns there is but a difference of form. We cannot, we confess, see any reason whatever for such an act. There was no need to create an impression on the native mind, for the victory did that. There was no fear of the example spreading, for defeat never spreads. There was no accidental concurrence of dangers making delay impossible, for at Delhi, the nearest capital, there lay, as it happened, an army in the field equal not only to any slaughter of Kook as, but to a serious campaign. Mr. Cowan cannot have dreaded a rescue, for his troops, whoever they were, were strong enough to defeat the Kookas, and obedient enough to blow them away from guns. Mr. Forsyth may con- ceivably have had reason to fear a rising for rescue in the dangerous city of Umritsur, but that was a reason for telegraphing for a battery, not for executing disarmed men. We cannot but fear that both officers acted on the impression left by the mutinies upon so many minds, that disaffected natives can be cowed only by measures of terrific severity, an impression so strong that, with the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab and the Viceroy within reach of the telegraph wire, and a great army so posted that it could sand reinforce- ments by railway in less than twelve hours, they deemed it necessary to prevent the possible weakness of their chiefs. The notion of their being panic-stricken is merely absurd. Mr. Cowan is an unknown man, but it is quite clear from his action in dashing with a native guard on the fanatics that panic and indecision are not among his foibles ; while Mr. Forsyth's courage has been proved by every conceivable test— as a ruler during the mutinies, as an explorer of unknown regions, as a prisoner in the hands of barbarians—and has never been known to fail. His offence, at least, and as we believe, it will be found that of Mr. Cowan also, lies in a rash assumption that Imperial policy, the charge of which was not entrusted to them, would dictate the massacre of disarmed insurgents.
We do not believe that it dictates anything of the kind. We believe rather that the haughtily humane advice parcere subjectis, debellare superbos, is the only advice which can enable a handful of men permanently to govern millions. Nothing breaks the heart of an insurgent leader like the conviction that if his followers waver they can make their peace, a conviction which before 1857 was so strong throughout India that it was probably the main reason why the.leaders in the Mutiny tolerated massacres which cut off their soldiers from all hope of pardon. The regular course when insurgents were frightened was for them to melt away, unpursued by the British troops and unharassed by British police, silently to their homes, and a most excellent course it was for the Imperial power. Mr. Forsyth will say no doubt that it was necessary to impress the native mind, and no doubt the native mind will be impressed by these executions, but with what kind of an impression ? Is it not with this,—that for a man who has " risen " the only safe course, or indeed possible course, is to die fighting to the last ? The politic impression to leave on the mind of a vast population ruled by a minute minority is the certainty that if it tries insurrection it will, unless it submits, be utterly smashed, but that if it submits it may escape. In such a situation as ours in India, no conceivable degree of energy, promptitude, and daring can be too great. There is no time and no need for Riot Acts, or parleys, or any other expedient except instant attack, carried out till the enemy yields; but then his yielding is the object, and quarter induces him to yield. It is failure which impresses a native, not his chance of death, which when excited he cares nothing about. If in the next war we kill all our prisoners, we shall make none, and shall have to expend fifty lives to semi° victory where one would have sufficed, and in what does an insurrection of this kind differ from a war ? Let -the advocates of severity remember what amount of exertion, expenditure, and waste of life it takes to put down a dozen Moplahs, just because those under- sized idiots never rise without intending to die. A mutiny is not a war, nor is an insurrection attended with massacre ; but this is not a mutiny, and to refuse quarter is not the way to teach enemies to spare prisoners who have submitted. Apart entirely from moral and political reasons, it is official insanity to allow subordinate officers, with the telegraph in their hands, to initiate without orders a policy so new, so strange, and so far-reaching in its consequences as that of refusing quarter to all insurgents. Apart entirely from moral or official reasons, it is politically foolish to warn the majority—and such a majority!—that if they rise against the minority they can only be safe from death if they have killed them all. And apart from political and official reasons, it is morally wrong for a Christian government ruling a conquered popula- tion to order wholesale massacres because that population, after trying resistance, had submitted itself to our justice or our mercy. Mr. Cowan is, we dare say, as excellent an officer as he is a brave and decided one ; but if we can only hold India by allowing good officers to execute insurgents in heaps after they have submitted, governing India is not a task in which we ought to persist. If we act on military principles, let us grant quarter. If we act on civil principles, let us give the accused fair hearing, and not, as at Malod, punish insur- gents deceived by fanaticism and a crafty leader as if they were all deliberate murderers. Hindoo philosophy is not ours, but Hindoos recognize as well as we do that "high calm which marks the strong."
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